Technical Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to providing a method and system for presenting users with the ability to host a virtual world, such as in a game based environment for teaching and learning, which is suitable for “pay-as-you go” service.
Description of Related Art
A virtual world is a simulated environment in which users may inhabit and interact with one another via avatars. An avatar generally provides a graphical representation of an individual within the virtual world environment. Avatars are usually presented to other users using a graphical representation depicting a human-like character. Multiple users “enter” a virtual world by logging on to a central server(s) and interact with one another through the actions of their avatars. The actions of a given avatar are typically controlled by the individual using a mouse and keyboard. Virtual worlds provide an immersive environment with an appearance typically similar to that of the real world, with real world rules such as gravity, topography, locomotion, real-time actions, and communication. Communication may be in the form of text messages sent between avatars, but may also include real-time voice chats.
Virtual worlds may be persistent between times when a given user is logged on. A persistent world provides an immersive environment (e.g., a fantasy setting used as a setting for a role-playing game) that is generally always available, and virtual world events happen continually, regardless of the presence of a given avatar. Thus, unlike more conventional online games or multi-user environments, the events within a virtual world continue to occur for connected users even while other users are not actively logged on to the virtual world.
Massively multiplayer online games commonly depict a world very similar to reality, with real world rules and real-time actions, and communication. Players create a character that travels between buildings, towns, and spaces in the worlds to carry out business or leisure activities. Communication is usually textual, with real-time voice communication using VOIP also possible.
Virtual worlds are not limited to games but, depending on the degree of immediacy presented, can encompass computer conferencing and text based chat rooms. Sometimes, emoticons or ‘smilies’ are available, to show feeling or facial expression. Emoticons often have a keyboard shortcut.
Conventional massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and virtual worlds (such as Second Life), shown by example in FIG. 1A, are unable to scale to support very large numbers of players within a single game/world nor are these designed to facilitate the hosting of multiple worlds with different rule sets and content on the same server. This is because such games and virtual worlds are reliant on a single instance of the game, running on a single physical computer system, acting as the authority for all activities within the game. Typically, the limits to scaling in this scenario are the network bandwidth of the single system and, more significantly, the processor capacity of a game server in the system. The game server, functioning as a game engine, is required to provide the simulation capabilities for every object and player in the virtual world. As the number of players (clients) increases, the computing resources required increases dramatically. Certain game servers, particularly those providing FPS (First Person Shooter) styles of games, are only capable of supporting tens of users due to the complexity of the simulation and the low latency requirements of the game.
As shown in FIG. 1B, in an attempt to address such issues, in certain conventional approaches, game systems implement “sharded” architectures that use a number of game servers (game engines), each hosting identical copies of a game. The players (clients) sometimes connect to the game through a common “lobby” service that hides the fact that there are multiple servers hosting the game. A major disadvantage to such approaches is that players are assigned to a particular server (at connection time) for the duration of their game session, and are thus effectively in different games but the hosts are unable to alter the rules or content of the world in any significant way. Also the fact that all players share a common landing page or lobby creates an inelegant problem of herding the visitors to their respective hosts. In effect this alternative also suffers from similar restrictions to the previous system.
Accordingly, an improved method and system of hosting multiple disparate virtual worlds on demand are highly desired.